The industry, including the American National Standards Institute, has developed a series of standards for small computer system interface (SCSI) cables which define the physical and electrical parameters of a parallel I/O bus used to interconnect computers and associated peripheral devices. Such peripheral devices include disk drives, tape drives, printers, CD-ROM drives, et al. A sample SCSI configuration is shown in FIG. 1. There, a host computer 10 is shown interconnected by a SCSI I/O bus 12 to a printer 14. Two other SCSI I/O cables 16 and 20 are daisy chained to a disk drive 18 and to a CD-ROM drive 22 by means of connectors 26 and 27. A separate terminator 24 containing bus termination circuitry is interconnected to the last unit in the chain in the usual manner. The daisy chain between the units 14, 18, and 22 is accomplished by means of commoning the conductors within the two connectors 26. When one of the units 14, 18, or 22 is removed from the system, a separate terminator, not shown but similar to the terminator 24, must be connected to the unmated connector so that the system remains operational. An example of the connector 27 is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,211,578 which issued May 18, 1993 to Henschen et al. and which is incorporated herein by reference. The '378 patent discloses an SCSI cable assembly utilizing a connector similar to that of the present invention and a solder nest for organizing the cable conductors and their associated connector leads for soldering. This cable assembly, however, has no provisions for a built in terminator circuit. As shown in FIG. 2, the host computer 10 may be interconnected to an I/O device 28 by means of an SCSI cable 30 having connectors 32 attached to each end as well as a separate feed through terminator 34 piggybacked to the connector attached to the device 28. With this configuration, when a device 28 is removed from the system, the terminator is already in place. However, this adds parts and cost to the system. Additionally, the terminator 34 adds to the space requirements of the cable and increases its bulk, both being undesirable results.
What is needed is an SCSI cable assembly having a terminator circuit that is arranged within the shell of the connector and interconnected to the conductors of the cable and their respective connector leads so that when a device is removed from the system the SCSI cable is automatically terminated. Additionally, an efficient and economical method of making the SCSI cable assembly is needed.